


So He Kindly Stopped for Me

by RewriteTheRules



Series: I Would Not Stop for Death [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Fluff and Angst, He's not, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mind Palace, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Reunions, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sherlock thinks John is dead, Spoiler Alert - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-11 13:45:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15316779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RewriteTheRules/pseuds/RewriteTheRules
Summary: Sherlock would rather bury himself in his mind palace than face another day without John. And it works. Until it doesn't. Because a certain army doctor would rather his boyfriend be coherent when he tells him he's alive.





	So He Kindly Stopped for Me

**Author's Note:**

> The response for the first part blew me away! So, back by popular demand, here is the second installment, "So He Kindly Stopped for Me". Thanks so much for clicking on and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Sherlock distinctly remembered punching his brother in the face, but his knuckles weren’t bruised. He remembered the needles and the sweet, burning relief as the drugs teased his veins, but his forearms were as pure and innocent as they’d never been in his life. Absentmindedly, he brushed his nails along the pale skin, bridging the gap between the radius and the ulna. He sighed through his nose.

“Alright?”

Sherlock spun on his heel, kitchen knife pressed dangerously against the neck of the man who’d come in. It clattered to the floor the second he realized it was John.

It all came flooding back. The reunion at Bart’s, the taxi ride to Baker Street. There was more, Sherlock was certain of it, but it remained begrudgingly locked behind an iron door in his mind palace. For once, he didn’t probe. 

“Apologies,” Sherlock breathed, hand flying to his chest. “I forgot -”

John laughed. “It’s alright,” he said. “Just bringing you your tea.” He held out a cup in his hands. Sherlock just stared at it.

Tea. That was right, wasn’t it? They’d been discussing something in the living room, and John had suggested tea. Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “That was quick,” he noted. John rolled his eyes.

“How deep were you? I had to go to the shops and back,” he chuckled. Suddenly, Sherlock was uncomfortable. 

“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. “Nothing worthwhile out there, anyway.” 

John raised an eyebrow. “Out there?”

“In there,” Sherlock corrected. “I…misspoke.” 

John laughed. “Right,” he said. “Well, maybe you should stay in the present for a bit? You’ll go mad if you keep playing in your mind palace. Lose sight of what’s real.”

Sherlock snorted and finally took the tea. It tasted different, but Sherlock couldn’t put his finger on the precise reason why. “You sound like Mycroft.” 

John laughed again, but this time, the eye-roll that followed was somewhat fond. “How is the British government, anyway?”

“Boring,” Sherlock mumbled. “Last we spoke he was trying to convince me you’re still dead.”

John was thoughtful for a moment. He seemed to really consider Sherlock’s words. Then he came over to lay his head on his shoulder. “You’re right,” he murmured into the fabric of Sherlock’s jacket. “You’re better off here with me.” 

Before John, Baker Street was just an address. The rooms inside were just hollowed out boxes and furniture and functionality. Now, it was a home. John’s shampoo was on his shelf in the bathroom. His favorite pillow was on the left side of the bed, just where he’d always liked it. They'd even spray-painted a ridiculous smiley face behind the couch for target practice. Of course, John had pretended to disapprove of Sherlock’s considerably strange and dangerous pastimes, but they’d always laugh about it over the takeaway they had on the nights when neither of them felt like cooking. 

“Yes,” Sherlock whispered. “Here is much better.”

***

Mycroft Holmes did not enjoy getting involved.

He did not enjoy legwork.

He did not enjoy sentiment.

But damn it all if he didn't want to break John Watson's jaw.

"One more time," he growled, exhaling sharply through his teeth. "Slowly. In detail."

John groaned and Mycroft wanted to leap across the desk and wipe that irritated look off his face. "Like I said," he mumbled. "After they got me out I was comatose for months. I just woke up, Mycroft, if I could have contacted you I would have. The hospital was small, they hardly spoke English. I'm lucky to be alive." 

Mycroft smiled unpleasantly. "Yes," he said, his voice oily. "Well I should be glad about that, shouldn't I? It will allow me to kill you myself." 

John flexed his left hand intermittently. The scowl he wore could have rivaled Mycroft's own. "I'm sure I'd agree with you," he huffed. "If you would tell me what the hell's been going on.”

***

The kettle whistled. Standing right in front of it, and having forgotten he'd set the water to boil in the first place, Sherlock jumped.

John giggled, the same giggle he often used when he was laughing at something inappropriate. "What's the matter with you?"

Sherlock ran his hands through his hair. "Lost in thought," he admitted. John's eyes narrowed.

"Again?" 

Sherlock shrugged. "It's not easy," he sighed. "Especially given my intellectual prowess." 

John smacked his shoulder. "Prat," he complained. Sherlock secretly wished he would swat at him again. John's physical presence, in any manner, was reassuring. It told Sherlock that he wasn't mad. That this time, John really had come home. 

John noticed Sherlock's change in mood immediately. "Seriously," he whispered. "What's going on?"

Sherlock pursed his lips. "We're out of sugar," he said. "I thought you went to the shops?" 

John knit his eyebrows together in a worried line. "Did I?" he wondered. "If we're out of sugar, we can just go get some more. It's not a big deal.”

"But you went to the shops,” Sherlock insisted. "You said so yourself. It was only a couple of hours ago, how could we run out of sugar so fast?"

John laughed again, this time somewhat uncomfortably. "Is that really what's upsetting you so much?"

Sherlock tensed. He reached out and touched John's shoulder, massaging the area, feeling for the taut skin beneath the itchy material of the jumper he wore. "It feels different," he said. He took a shuddering breath. 

The look John gave him froze his heart. "Quit picking things apart," he warned. "If you want to stay with me, don't question it. Just be happy."

Sherlock tried to ignore the wetness that had formed at the corners of his eyes. “I can’t remember how.”

***

It took Mycroft’s car exactly fourteen minutes to pull up beside 221B Baker Street. The driver let both men out, then followed Mycroft’s orders to return for him at the top of the next hour. John nodded at the door. “Go on,” he said. “I don’t have a key.” 

Mycroft hesitated, and the half-second of uncertainty spoke more to his state of mind than anything he could have said. “I should prepare you,” he began, but John cut him off.

“I’ve waited long enough,” he bit back. “After you.”

The seventeen steps it took to reach Sherlock’s door were the longest of John Watson’s life, made longer by the cane he was forced to use. The distinct walking pattern wouldn’t go unnoticed by Sherlock, and John half-expected to see the younger man meet them at the halfway point. But his door remained stubbornly closed. 

Mycroft tapped the frame three times with the end of his umbrella. “Sherlock?” 

There was no reply. Of course there wasn’t, John wanted to scream. In what universe would Sherlock want Mycroft to come knocking? He jostled the doorknob himself and hit the wood with the palm of his hand. “Sherlock? Are you in there?” 

This was when the first seeds of fear planted themselves in John’s bones. Sherlock wouldn’t ignore him. 

“Like I said,” Mycroft muttered. “I should probably prepare you.”

***

It was stupid. It was so, so stupid.

He just couldn’t stop nagging at the threads, and now everything was unravelling. 

“It’s not real,” Sherlock breathed. “None of this is real.”

John kissed his neck. “I’m here,” he crooned, and Sherlock wanted to scream, because he should have realized this wasn’t John. It never was. “Stay with me,” he bargained. 

“It’s not the same,” he said. “It doesn’t feel right. This isn’t right.” 

John tilted his chin so that they were facing each other. He swallowed, and Sherlock watched his Adam’s apple bob beneath the tiny hairs on his throat, and dear God, how was this not real? “Then you know what you have to do,” John said. Sherlock’s heart plummeted. 

Of course he knew what he had to do. Wake up, stop playing pretend. Return to reality, try to find a shred of happiness that probably didn’t even exist. 

“You have to go deeper.”

***

John had seen Sherlock in many forms. Bloody hell, Sherlock was in hospital when they first met. He’d seen him on and off drugs, with and without sleep, before breakfast and after midnight, and when it all became too much and he had to scream into his pillow just to let it out. 

But he’d never seen him like this.

Mycroft strolled behind the couch and patted Sherlock’s curls with more compassion than John ever imagined him capable of. “Come sit,” Mycroft said, nodding to the vacant seat beside Sherlock. “You won’t wake him. He’s not asleep.” 

John did not move. “Then what’s he doing?”

“Before you left,” Mycroft wondered. “Had Sherlock begun constructing his mind palace?”

John managed to tear his eyes away from Sherlock long enough to look confused. “What the hell is a mind palace?”

***

John kissed Sherlock’s knuckles one at a time, those lips like a whisper against his skin. Sherlock trembled. 

"I miss you," he moaned. John shook his head.

"It was a bad dream," he whispered. "Just a bad dream."

Sherlock was too tired to try and convince himself otherwise.

***

"There's nothing we can do," Mycroft finished resignedly. "We just have to wait him out."

"Wait him out?" John repeated. "While he torments himself in a godforsaken memory prison?"

Mycroft shrugged. "I am not in the habit of bragging," John rolled his eyes, but Mycroft continued before he could make a snide comment. "But I would point out that the next time you doubt my brother's misplaced affections for you, you need only remember this moment. Because he's done this to himself solely for want of your company."

***

Focusing on the little things kept Sherlock blessedly ignorant. 

The tiny bit of stubble under John's jaw that he'd missed while shaving that morning.

The cream-colored snag in the sweater he wore.

The steam that swirled around the top of the teacup, the crinkling of the takeaway bag, the chip in the remote control.

Of course, self-constructed scenarios and a John Watson who spoke words Sherlock himself put there only kept him occupied for so long. He grew restless too quickly for his own liking. Though he knew it was dangerous, considerably more dangerous than playing house in a make-believe universe, he decided to start dabbling in memories. At least there, John would be John. His John.

***

John was playing house in a world of make-believe.

He'd been at 221B Baker Street for all of two days and had barely left Sherlock alone long enough to use the toilet. After a harrowing argument with Mycroft (one which John could proudly say he'd won) all of his belongings were brought by. At first, filing away his things and hanging up his clothes kept him busy enough to pretend Sherlock was just in one of his moods. But that first night, when there was nothing else to be done (he'd even introduced himself to the landlady to try and pass the time) all that was left was to curl up beside Sherlock on the sofa and watch him deteriorate. 

His skin wasn't just pale anymore, it was translucent. John had to stop himself from counting the webbed, blue veins in his neck. His breaths were slow but shallow, and he'd lost weight. Too much weight. His skin was practically hanging from his bones, giving him a haggard, sick look. He was passive, but not peaceful. This isn't a state John would have mistaken for sleep. It's a state he would have mistaken for death.

He tried to wake Sherlock so many times. At first it was desperate, shaking and shouting and tossing a glass of water at his face. Then, it was just pathetic. He just talked. Talked and talked and hoped that Sherlock would surface enough to hear him.

On the morning of the third day spent in the flat at Baker Street, John could take it no longer. After Mrs. Hudson left from her daily trip upstairs to bring them their tea, John marched to the couch and settled himself in Sherlock's lap, burying his face in the crook of the younger man's neck. "Please," he whispered. "Just come back to me."

***

Sherlock's attention snapped over to John, who was tapping away at his keyboard. "What did you just say?" 

John didn't turn around, but simply repeated, "Please, just come back to me." 

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked. "I haven't gone anywhere." 

John shrugged. "I miss you."

Sherlock crossed the room in two long strides and wound his arms around John. "But I'm right here, John." 

Though John's face was still calm and clearly focused on the computer screen, his voice was raspy, pained. "Christ," he whispered. "I miss you so much." 

Sherlock pulled the chair away from the desk and forced John to look at him. "Is someone threatening you?" he asked. John shook his head, but he wasn't looking at him. He gaze went straight through him. "Why are you saying these things?"

"I don't know what the hell you're dreaming up in that thick head of yours," he muttered. "But you're fading away right in front of me. Stop it!" His voice rose, like he was yelling, but his expression didn't change to match. "Just stop this!" 

Ice sloshed through Sherlock's blood. "John?"

"Just wake up, you idiot," John stammered. "Wake up and come back to me."

***

John's tirade over and Sherlock's dressing gown stained with tears, the hours ticked by. 

They stayed that way for a long while, and eventually, John dozed off, pretending that Sherlock really was holding him back.

***

Sherlock woke up, but when he did, he was aware of many things. 

He cursed under his breath. He'd surfaced too far. The illusion would only last a few minutes at most before it came crumbling apart. He was meant to be going deeper, not floating back up to the top.

In any case, he took his surroundings in just the same. He was still in his flat, on the sofa, it would seem. John must have done some cleaning up, because the place was much more organized than its predecessors. Sherlock frowned when he glanced up and saw that the smiley face was gone. Why would John have scrubbed it off? He'd said in just the last one that it gave the place some personality. 

Speaking of John, he was curled up in Sherlock's lap, his face buried in his chest. His hair was an absolute wreck, but it looked different. A few grey hairs poked through between the blonds. How had he not noticed?

And what little he could see of John's face was red and splotchy, like he'd been crying. Now he wanted to be in this delusion even less. He didn't want John to be upset. Oh God, what if Sherlock had caused it? Was his subconscious really so cruel?

He was about to shake John awake and just ask him when a horrible ache settled itself in Sherlock's gut. Like a pang of hunger, so forceful in its appearance it almost made him sick. He was shaking - that was new, why was he shaking? Last he saw there wasn't any physical evidence of his drug use or its absence. Why surface now?

He must have flinched when the pain began, because John shot up in a panic, eyes wide, muscles wound up tight. His gaze shot around the room like a wild animal, but after a moment, he settled and ran his hands over his face. He shook his head, like he could dislodge whatever was troubling his mind. Sherlock envied him this ability. 

Another wave of misery crashed over Sherlock's body and he gasped, which had John's focus pinned on him in an instant. For a second, they just looked at each other. Sherlock, for once, was speechless. All the small changes, the new creases in his skin and the scar on his temple and the cracks in his lips, made John almost unrecognizable. These, of course, were the only things Sherlock was able to catalogue before he was smashed against John's shoulder, breathing in a scent he thought he'd memorized but God, he hadn't. Every familiar smell before now paled in comparison to this.

A sob tore through John's chest. "You're here," he said, his voice thick and wet. "You're okay." 

Sherlock, in somewhat of a stupor, asked, "Why wouldn't I be?" 

His voice was muffled by the material of John's jumper, but John must have understood nonetheless. He laughed between the tears, still refusing to let Sherlock go. "You git," he murmured. "You've no idea what's going on, do you?"

And Sherlock didn't. Because everything was so much sharper, so much heavier, it was making him dizzy. John's voice had a thousand nuances he'd failed to consider, his eyes had flecks of color he'd forgotten about, and if this wasn't real then Sherlock was dead, and if he wasn't dead then he soon would be. Every sense was John, every breath was John, and Sherlock was a fool if he'd ever thought that a trick of his mind could somehow give him this. 

It was too much. Sensory overload and he couldn't decode what was happening. John finally pulled back and gripped Sherlock with his strong, steady hands. It was only then that he realized he'd been trembling. "What's happening?" And he must have been crying as well, something was dripping from his chin and he didn't know if it was his tears or John's but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but John.

"I'm here," John said, and it came out more like a whimper, something Sherlock didn't think he'd ever heard uttered from John Watson's lips. "I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm not going anywhere." 

Sherlock couldn't feel his own body. He didn't know where his voice was coming from. "You're not," he choked. "You're dead, you were blown up in Afghanistan, they called Mycroft and -"

"I got shot," John corrected, and he absently tapped the scar Sherlock had noticed on his temple. "But I'm alright. I just woke up, Sherlock, there was no way to tell you or I would have, you know I would have." 

Sherlock's throat was closing. "This is real?"

Guilt washed over John's features. "Jesus," he moaned. "I'm so sorry, Sherlock, I'm so fucking sorry. You did this to yourself because of me." 

Without realizing he was doing it, Sherlock's fingers danced over John's face, catching John's hand in the process and bringing it down to his chest. There, right there. Drums in his ribcage, a bass in his bones, the steady, reassuring thrum of a beating heart.

A heartbeat. The one thing he'd missed in every delusion. No matter how deeply he buried himself in his mind palace, no matter how many memories he relived, he'd never felt John, not like this. The man who was still half-straddling him on the sofa was alive. There was life in every blink, in every flush, in every breath. This was no shadow. This was no hallucination. Not a trick. This was John.

Something switched in Sherlock's brilliant brain, and he gathered John in his arms before the other man could catch his breath. They were pressed together as tightly as two people could be, neither sure where one's skin ended and the other's began. Everything was wet and snotty and Sherlock was too thin and John wasn't the same, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but John. The shuddering breath that rattled in Sherlock's chest was half-overwhelmed, half-relieved, and all real. Emotions, feelings, sentiment, everything he'd once denounced. If he was a cold, calculating machine, then John Watson was his humanity. Every last bit of it.

"I love you." 

Neither knew which of them said it, but they both said it back. Over and over and over again, until the words stopped making sense.

***

Later that night, when a certain smiley face had been spray painted on the wall and the takeaway was finished, John and Sherlock sat across from each other in the living room. John was pretending to read an article on his phone and Sherlock was spinning his magnifying glass in between his fingers, but secretly, they were just looking at each other. Listening to the hum of the furnace. Watching the sun go down from the window. 

There was a knock at the door. Apparently, while he was drowning himself in his mind palace, Sherlock had been missing out on an interesting prospective case. He'd been following the serial suicides in the papers, of course, but something about this fourth one was different enough for Lestrade to come around asking for help.

"Will you come?"

Sherlock looked at John expectantly. The smile they shared was inappropriate and deranged and brilliant.

Now, now they were home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably leave it here unless there seems to be a good story to tell at a later time, in which case I'll leave the opportunity open to continue. For more from me, you can check out my other series, "Subterfuge", in which Sherlock took his fall without telling anyone (including Molly, Mycroft and, of course, John). Some of this might have been a bit OOC, but it was great fun to explore this more emotive, unpredictable Sherlock! Thank you for your time and have a lovely day/night! Lots of love! <3


End file.
